LET'S CALL THE WHOLE THING MOSQUITO REPELLENT
by Ducksoup

Recently my bro Snail and I had a disagreement about a song lyric.

As many of you probably know, such impasses can lead to anger, resentment and, in extreme cases, nuclear exchange. (Such was the case in 1945 when President Truman vehemently disagreed with Emperor Hirohito over "Three Little Fishies In A Itty Bitty Poo". Hirohito correctly insisted 'poo' actually meant 'pool', while Truman maintained it was a scatological reference.)

The lyric in question was from Allan Sherman's version of "Mexican Hat Dance". The correct lyric, which I have known for years because I have it on vinyl, is "They just throw their fedoras wherever the floor is and start doing horas and taps." Snail stubbornly argued that the last part of the line was "chorus and taps".

Extensive research, including an email correspondence with THE authority on novelty music, Dr. Demento, confirmed what I knew all along. But actually it only takes a few moments of logical reasoning to see that I am right.

For starters, the hora is a dance popular in Jewish culture, and one of Sherman's comedic signatures was making Yiddish references in his songs. Second, 'horas', like 'taps', is plural, as opposed to 'chorus'. For that idea to fit, it would have to be 'choruses' or even 'chori', and neither of those even come close to rhyming.

Which brings us to the clincher, which is that even the singular 'chorus' still does not rhyme. Case in point: 'fedoras' ends with a 'z' sound; 'floor is' ends with a 'z' sound; and, of course, 'horas' ends with, you guessed it, a 'z' sound. 'Chorus', on the other hand, ends with an 's' sound, and therefore is not an exact rhyme.

Now, I realize that in this day and age, this seems like nitpicking. But back in Sherman's day, precise rhyming of lyrics was of the greatest importance to the songwriter, as demonstrated by Sherman himself in his song "Hungarian Goulash", which contains one of the greatest rhymes in history: "Borscht is what they're eating in the Soviet/Wait I think we've got some on the stove yet."

Granted, this was the early-to-mid sixties, back before the English language, for all practical purposes, simply ran out of words. In fact, the very last plausible English language rhyme was discovered in 1994, when a little known Indonesian ska band, Sticky Tape, successfully rhymed 'orange' with 'door hinge'.

By the way, at this point I should give props to Elvis Costello who, according to a review of his latest album, may be the first and last songwriter in the 21st century to use the word 'elocution' (and no, that's not what happens to you when you stick your finger in a light socket) in a song lyric.

Of course, nowadays exact rhyming has gone the way of the Edsel, and if, say, Puddle Of Mudd or Destiny's Child were to cover Sherman's version of "Mexican Hat Dance", 'chorus' would pass for a rhyme in the ears of the average listener. But I know better. I fear that in another 10 years or so, the concept of rhyming lyrics, even rhymes deemed 'close enough for jazz', will be completely lost.

We simply cannot sit idly by and watch this happen, my friends. I cannot and will not accept a song lyric which attempts to rhyme, for example, 'toast' with 'zebra', simply because they both have an 'a' in them.

This, of course, is why, a couple of years ago, I had to abandon my own attempt to write a song about toasted zebras.